Operation Teapot, short and stout

June 13, 2002

The Smoking Gun has documents from the results of Operation Teapot, a 1955 test of an atomic bomb on beer and soda.

At the time, it must have seemed like a grand idea to the folks at the Food and Drug Administration and the Federal Civil Defense Administration. In 1955, the U.S. agencies conducted experiments, dubbed Operation Teapot, in the Nevada desert to determine what impact a nuclear explosion would have on beer and soda cans